Aronofsky's Black Swan has been recognised by the Oscars for performances by Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. Without doubt Portman will win. This, I feel, is expressive of the kind of film that Aronofsky has created. Black Swan is interesting as a performance piece that has allowed Portman to, forgive the pun, stretch her acting wings. She has done so with an intense performance and one that shows dedication to her craft but equally that of the artistry of ballet. This is, in my opinion the extent of the praise I can muster for the film.
From the perspective of storytelling, this is a muddled and unsatisfying yarn. Taking the ballet Swan Lake as the source inspiration as well as using it as a parallel plot, Aronofsky has attempted to show how harsh, obsessive and apparently distrubing the world of professional ballet can be. As Nina, portrayed by Portman, struggles to define herself as a ballerina through the authorship and mastery of the role of the swan queen, we see her pursuit of perfection in her performance, the interferenece of her mother and the competition of her rival unravelling her mental stabilty. Nina is literally forced by her director to deconstruct her rigid, safe, and desexed self, that is personsified by the crude metaphor of the white swan character in the ballet. She must undo herself in order to embrace and ultimatley become the sexual and dangerous aspect of herself that is the black swan. Aronofsky seems to suggest that only by the complete destruction of herself can Nina have the capacity to create as an artist.This is taken to its literal end when Nina does in fact stab herself. dying at the climax of her performance in the throws of her achievement of perfection.
What does not come over well is the portrayal of Nina as a victim of a mental disorder. The film seems to make light of mental illness for the sake of Aronofsky's wish to show his cinematic flare. We are never allowed to truly see into Nina's mind. If indeed the cinematography is anything to guide us, we are following Nina on her shoulder, seeing what she does but somewhat removed at the same time. This leaves the feeling of not being allowed to fully empathise nor understand Nina as we are denied access. What we get instead is the far too present sensation of Aronofsky's directorial hand. We see the reactions he chooses to show, which are typically only those marked by her ever increasing episodes of instability, such as seeing things in mirrors. Aronofsky denies us the reason behind why she self harms, yet fixates her scratches , ultimately having them mutate into a set of CGI wings that symbolise, far too literally, the emergence of the black swan and the white swan's annihilation. 
The film feels like Aronofsky wished to show a transformation of an artist, but chose to show it visually through effect and camera rather than with a convincing and well written character. Seeing Portman react over an over again to Aronosky's fright tactics expresses little for the character's development. I found myself screaming at the screen, "I get it, she's paranoid!" We only see her descend further and further out of her already mentally unstable reality and into greater madness which she does not understand and nor does the audience. Nina finds perfection in her performance as she believes she has fully transformed herself into the black swan. Yet if the character is considered, Nina has no sense of self awareness to her authorship. She becomes the black swan not by artistry but by the gradual fragmentation and final destruction of her psyche. This makes no sense if this is intended to be a film about a dancer's first opportunity at authorship. It is one thing to say a person must lose oneself to find oneself, but is Aronofsky trying to suggest an artist must destroy themselves to create true art? From a psychological perspective, Nina's world and development are a nonsense and what is worse, it this is done for cinematic effect alone, or so it appears to me.
Aronofsky has told this story before with Pi. Both are tales of obsessive people driven to greater madness by internal and external pressures. He appears to like the cinematic niche of paranoid characters that he can portray through his overt directorial style. This for me is the biggest flaw of Black Swan. Aronofsky is himself, much like his characters, all to obsessed with showing his director-as -auteur style. The verisimilitude of the story and the characters is lost as we are pulled out by a directorial style that literally wants to show itself off. It comes across however as, "Look what I'm doing, aren't I clever.'
Aranofsky has made what I can only describe as self indulgent intellectual masturbation. He and a lot of critics are getting off on this nonsensical mess that presents itself as insightful but actually tells us nothing. The writers have been totally overpowered by Aronofsky in terms of creative voice, the story just does not come through. Instead there is deliberately convoluted lead character surrounded by archetypal figures that serve as symptoms of her madness. Only Portman being as convincing as she is combined with her own choices of how to portray this character gives this film any merit. Aronofsky has created a film should have shown the internal destruction of an artist for her art, yet chooses to show her mental state totally externally in the guise of cinematic trickery.
Not impressed, not convinced. Alas most people will go and see this film due to the hype that Portman and Kunis have a lesbian scene. This is possibly the most disturbing chick flick you are likely to come across.
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